With somewhat mixed feelings, Julie and I have bought a second house in the village. Mixed, because while we’re delighted that we’ve been able to buy a lovely little bungalow for friends, family and volunteers to stay in, and they’re very happy that finally they can do things like get an eye operation for grandfather,…
Read moreCategory: Diary
Day-to-day diary entries
Not what I envisioned
One of the reasons we chose to live in Bulgaria was the wildlife. We haven’t had much time to see much of it yet but I look forward to when we can go out and hopefully see some of the animals we have around us. We had otters where we lived in the UK and…
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Christmas in Bulgaria, 2014
We weren’t quite sure what to expect from a Christmas in Bulgaria. We’d researched about the traditions observed here and got a lot of different information, but still couldn’t find out what happened locally. Most of our Bulgarian neighbours went to stay with their families in Popovo, so our neighbourhood felt quite deserted on Christmas…
Read moreMerry Christmas!
Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas, and all the best for the New Year. Lots of love from Julie and Joe.
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New arrivals!
We got chickens!!! Some friends of ours have had to return to the UK and asked us if we wanted their chickens. Naturally we said yes, so we now have five hens, all still laying and they are lovely birds. They’re very used to being handled, interested in everything we do, and they seem to…
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Cold weather stops play
Work on the bathroom has ground to a halt now that the weather has got too cold to plaster walls or put tiles up. Unfortunately we’ve taken the boiler out and can’t easily put it back, so we’ve got no shower, probably until spring. It’s not a problem though; a bath in the kitchen will…
Read moreMaking sausages part two
We made batches of sausages, loosely following recipes from here The Spicy Sausage Batch 1 5-lbs ground pork 3/4-lbs whole milk mozzarella, cut into ¼” cubes 1-bunch Italian parsley, finely chopped 6 ½-oz sun-dried tomatoes in oil, coarsely chopped 1-tbsp dried basil 1-tbsp fennel seed 1-tbsp coarse black pepper 4-tsp salt 1-tsp oregano 1-tbsp ground…
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Pig to plate, not for the faint hearted
Some people may find the pictures at the bottom distressing. They show a pig being killed and butchered. One day we hope to rear our own pig. If we are going to do this we feel it’s important that we are able to complete the chain, from farm to plate, by taking part in the…
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